Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which includes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is a relapsing and remitting chronic disease for which treatment options are limited. Further, most existing treatments are associated with significant side effects. Newer, targeted treatments such as treatment with anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) agents are effective in a subset of patients but these treatments are administered systemically and are also associated with significant side effects. The ability to target drugs to the site of inflammation in sufficient quantities to maximize local drug concentration and minimize systemic side effects would represent a major advance in therapeutic strategies for treating diseases such as IBD. Targeting drugs to the site of inflammation has remained a challenge in IBD because of the lack of vehicles that can carry sufficient drugs or that can release the drugs they carry at the site of inflammation. It is also challenging to deliver drugs to the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, particularly the colon, due to degradation by digestive enzymes. Various carriers have been designed to release the drug at a specific pH value, to be resistant to digestive enzymes, and/or to require bacterial cleavage for activation, and several of these types of carriers are currently being investigated. However, most delivery systems under development still require the initial incorporation and/or administration of drugs in large doses, multiple times a day, resulting in poor patient compliance.